Embodiments in this application relate to an expert system and method for aircraft mission modeling using a matrix application. In a preferred embodiment, the invention is incorporated into Mission Modeler software used in conjunction with Satellite Toolkit (STK®) software available from Analytical Graphics Inc. of Malvern, Pa. More generally, embodiments of the invention relate to an expert system that draws on an extensive set of basic building blocks that represent standard aircraft maneuvers and concepts, and assembles those building blocks into complex and realistic sequences that represent aircraft motion with very high fidelity. One benefit of the embodiments disclosed herein is that they provide a simple system and method for users with no piloting experience to generate highly realistic flight paths.
Prior art solutions employed by mission planning software (various military flight planning systems such as the Portable Flight Planning Software—PFPS and the Joint Mission Planning System—JMPS, as well as commercial planning software such as FliteStar® from Jeppesen Sanderson, Inc.) use a data abstraction that is significantly more specific than employed by the invention. In particular, concepts that are easily modeled in the present invention, such as aerial refueling, formation flight, and takeoff and landing from moving aircraft carriers, require significant advances beyond prior art applications. One reason for this is that prior art solutions are dependent on fixed geographic points as a reference for calculations. Furthermore, the prior art solutions have a hard-coded user interface that is designed around their data abstraction. To change the user interface requires changing the data abstraction and vice versa. Since the present invention has a much simpler underlying data abstraction, its user interface only needs to know the general relationships and protocols, and can therefore adapt to objects which the inventor had no prior knowledge of.
Other prior art solutions used for the preparation of flight plans lack the ability to animate the aircraft's flight path with any degree of realism. These packages usually represent the flight path as a coarse sequence of straight line segments and are therefore mathematically incapable of computing a realistic, smooth attitude which, by the physics of aircraft flight, will always be curved.